Punch as You Build: Quality Control Tracking Within the Autodesk Construction Cloud Platform

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Welcome, everyone, to this Autodesk University 2023 class-- Punch as You Build-- Quality Control Tracking Within the Autodesk Construction Cloud Platform. My name is Mark Da Gama Rose. I'm the VDC director of operations. I've been at Clayco almost seven years.

JON WARD: Hi. My name is Jon Ward, regional quality control manager with Clayco I've Been with Clayco for about five years now.

NICK AUDRAIN: Hey. Nick Audrain here, senior virtual design and construction engineer. I've been with Clayco coming up on three years.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: So safe harbor statement here. What we're going to do is we're going to start talking to you about our company, Clayco, and just some highlights. Clayco was established in 1984, so almost 40 years, with revenues of over $5 billion, around 3,000 employees. Current safety EMR rating is 0.52.

And really, Clayco is a full-service integrated delivery firm. So we have architects in house, engineers in house. We have a lot of full-scale quality engineers. We have a group called Technical Assurance Group, which we'll talk about TAG. And we also have a VDC group, Virtual Design and Construction.

In terms of business units, we're in the institutional, commercial, industrial, residential, and science, and tech markets-- so all across the United States. And definitely a major focus is on design build projects. So go ahead, John.

JON WARD: Yeah. So the point of this class right here is why punch as you build? What is punch as you build? Some people sadly might think it's running around punching the subcontractors why they build. It's not that. What we're going for is to have zero to low to no punch list at the end of the job. And we're going to talk through that process of how we get there and what we do to set up the processes throughout the project to make sure that we can have low to no punch list at the end of that job. Next slide.

So we've probably all been through a traditional project and performing punch list at the end of the job. This graph here is collected from our BIM 360 on a traditional job where you see a few issues going in throughout the duration of that project. And then close to substantial completion, you'll see a month or two out, 800 issues get uploaded. At substantial completion, you're looking at 900, and then 900 more that month following.

Everybody's stressed out. There's 1,800 issues to close. The subs are all gone. The team's working out of a truck. It's a nightmare to try to get done. The owner is stressed out. Everybody is stressed out. They're trying to close issues while people are moving into the building. It's not a fun process. And on top of that, you lose losing GCs and costs while you're sitting there for three months trying to close these issues out.

So what we want to do is we want to take that and spread it out across the whole project. And that's where we come up with the term punch as you build. You'll see on the next slide.

This is a punch as you build project. So throughout this job, we're creating issues. We're getting with the subs. We're closing out issues. We're punching out these areas by trades as we're building so at the end of the job, we have little or no issues. We've just had one high-rise that finished in the West Coast that had 60 issues at the substantial completion of the project, which is absolutely outstanding.

I don't know of any high-rises that have come into completion with just 60 issues to close out. And that's just a testament to how punch as you build can work and how it saves money on the back end. A lot of people will say that you're going for zero punch lists, and there's no way to get zero punch lists. There's too many people that can walk around and create a punch list at the end of a job. You're never going to get it.

But I would say that a hundred years ago in the 1920s, 1930s when we were building things like the Empire State Building and the Hoover Dam, insurance companies would come out and say, 10 people are going to die on this project, and that's OK. That's an acceptable amount. If somebody from today were to go back then and say, we're going to have zero incidence on this job, zero safety incidents, no OSHA recordables through the whole project, they would've been laughed out of the room and said that this guy is ridiculous.

So the industry changed, right? It changed and it became better. And now, we see that death is horrible, of course. That never happened. So this industry is going to change. And we're going to show that quality can go the same route and have zero punch list or a very minimal punch list at the end of a job and save everybody time, and money, and stress. And there's a process we've kind of come up with using BIM 360 to do that. And that's what we're going to share with you guys today. Next slide.

So before we start with the process and what we're doing, we want to talk through the evolution of where we got to punch as you build, and how it started, and where the company has come from. So of course, we were founded in 1984. From then till about 2020-- a long period of time-- we were using things like the Vela system for collecting data digitally.

We kind of transitioned into BIM 360 Field in 2012, and then kind of hopped from there to the current BIM 360 in 2018. During that time, we were collecting some checklists. We had our-- as Mark mentioned-- our Technical Assurance Group TAG was developing a lot of different checklists. There was no real standard. Nobody was organizing them. We ended up having in our BIM 360 program something like 500 checklists.

And are a lot of them were duplicates-- had different questions for different ones. But it just didn't really make a lot of sense. So from there, we kind of come into about 2020, 2021, we got our first hyperscale mission critical project which required a lot of digital documentation from a QAQC program the owner required. So we started looking more in-depth at these checklists and issues and how we could use them to show our QAQC process.

And from that, we kind went through all the checklists that we had and whittled them down to about 200 template checklists that make sense for all projects or for most projects, and kind of standardized that across the company, and started working that into a what we're using now as punch as you build.

From 2021 to 2022, we were working on standardization still. We templatized all those checklists. We started putting together punch as you build, coined the term, started putting out the processes that we're going to show you today, and really started getting it off the ground. I will say it's a big ship with a lot of people and a lot of-- we're talking about over $5 billion. It's a hard ship to steer, but we've been turning it slowly.

So in '22, 2023, we've just been refining that process. We're looking at trends, and how we can get people on board, and increase buy-in, and keep showing how the benefits of this can help everybody from the owner all the way down to the subcontractor.

So to the meat and potatoes. What is this process? What can we do to make sure that we have no punch list or low punch list at the end of the job? The first thing we look at is what are our objectives? We want to communicate to the client and set clear expectations before the punch list process begins. We're going to build quality into this project and this is how we're going to do it.

This process, we're documenting large numbers of quality issues during the construction phase, which allows us to mine that data for trends we'll talk about later. We track a lot of issues through resolution with subcontractors weekly so we can stay on top of them and make sure these are getting done quickly. Of course, that goes into closing issues in a timely manner.

And again, it goes to that reducing overall punch list. That's the real goal there, zero punch list. But another one, just a side effect of this-- and that's a great stat to look at-- is rework. There's a lot of stats out there that talk about 39% of all injuries that happen on construction projects are due to rework.

And that just makes sense because when you have to rework something, the guy's upset. He has to go back and do the same thing over again. There's no plan. He's hurrying up. He's not looking for the right tools. He's probably grabbing whatever he can to go do the job. And that causes a lot of injuries, you know? 39% is a high number. So if you get rid of that rework, you get rid of those injuries, which just goes hand-in-hand with being safer and quality working together.

So this process that we're going to look at, there are really just five simple steps to make this process work. So the first step will be to look at the checklist that we have set up. Like I said, there's about 200 of them. We will get those, select the ones that we want to use-- well, not that we want to use. We'll go through the selection process here in a second. But we'll get those checklists and assign them to the subcontractors.

Those subcontractors will fill out those checklists for an area once it's complete, and they will sign it saying they've completed that area. That Clayco representative will then verify the area is complete and sign that checklist. At the same time, he will put in issues for that area. So if he signed, the subcontractor signs the checklist, says he's done, the Clayco individual can go in, inspect that area, put in five, six issues, sign it.

He says, all right. You're done except for these five or six issues. What you've essentially done here is you've created a tiny punch list by trade by area as you're building. So that sub can now go back and work on those few issues and get them done while he's still on the site while there's still construction going on. You're not waiting till the end. You're kind of just biting off that punch list little bits at a time as you're going along the project.

So the checklist, as I was saying, we whittled these down we got them to a template. And what we do from there, we've organized them all by division number. So you have 03 for concrete, or 05 for metal, or 23 for mechanical, and 26 for electrical. So if a electrical contractor typed in 26 and hit enter in the search bar, all the electrical checklist would show up. So we can see what's available to us. And then we'll go through those checklists as a site team.

When we sit down at the beginning of a project, we'll look through the checklist that we have and we'll pick the ones that apply to that project. And we'll get rid of the ones that don't apply to that project. So you might whittle it down from the 200 to 100 checklist that apply to your project that you're going to use. So we just delete out the other ones so they don't bog down the system. And now you've got the ones that you plan on using with your subcontractors.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: What's nice about these checklists is that they're coming from our BIM 360 account admin. Like Jon said, they're getting published to all the projects. And what's great about that from the software standpoint is that the project teams will pick, like Jon said, the ones that they want to use. But they don't have the ability to edit, for instance, slab on metal deck checklists.

We have a process where they come to the VDC Department. They review the questions that they may want to edit. Then it goes to our quality management team which includes Jon Ward. And then Jon and his team will review it. And if that's something that we think a request or an item needs to be changed, then it'll be changed on all projects.

So we really have a great way of preventing anyone from just changing these standardized checklists, right? This is really kind of a secure environment and works well with over a hundred concurrent projects over with over 200 checklists at one time.

JON WARD: Yeah, sometimes--

NICK AUDRAIN: To piggyback off what Mark said there, it's a great way of controlling maintaining the standards. But at the same time, if a project brings a question that they want to add to a checklist that works for their project, it might work for the rest of the projects. So there's kind of a feedback loop there where we can learn from our project teams how to improve the process as a whole for everyone.

JON WARD: Yeah. We are continually improving our checklist through feedback from the site teams. And sometimes, we might modify a checklist just for that one project, and it makes sense to do that and not push it to all projects. Sometimes it makes sense to change it to publish to all projects, and it makes a checklist better.

But once you have established those checklists that you want to use, the next step is to lay out boundaries and areas in BIM 360 where you want the checklist completed. And we want to try to do this based off of either our P6 or our three-week lookaheads from our superintendents, our sequence schedules that the superintendents put together. When they're doing that, we want to build these boundaries to match that. So whenever we have checklists that need to get done, they kind of line up with those schedules.

So in the sequence, you might see here in this picture these boundaries are set up as a couple different options. You have rooms laid out, like the comms room that's highlighted. You might have concrete placements like a ramp pour two. Or you might have something like sequence four, which falls in there. So you could say a pre-poured checklist needs to be completed for ramp pour two, obviously, or a drywall in-wall checklist would be needed to be done for the comms room.

If a plumber finishes the plumbing in sequence four, you would do a checklist for sequence four plumbing checklist and sign off on it. And then we would inspect, and put in issues against that sequence, and sign it off. So we would create these areas to flow with our schedule so that we can make sure that our checklists are getting done and we're punching out the progress of the projects in step with the rest of the team.

NICK AUDRAIN: Yeah, I think something important, Mark, if you'd go back to that slide, something important to note here is that this is often like a discussion between quality PC and the project team to determine what works best for that project.

If you're on a high-rise residential building and you've got a team of three people, four people, it might not make sense to do a checklist per room, because you might not have enough personnel on the project to manage that. You might want to consider doing it by unit, or by area per level, or even by level of the high-rise. So this process tries its best to meet the needs of the project.

JON WARD: Yeah. We've standardized this process so that we can know what's expected of each project team on each job. But we also gave it enough flexibility to where you can make it your own. So depending on your manpower or the size of the project, you can make your areas as small or as large as they need to be to fit your needs.

So once you have the areas and checklists laid out, you'll set this expectation with the subcontractor. This is what's going to happen. You're going to be filling out these checklists in these areas once you close out that project. You set the expectation with them, and they will come around and fill these out. They're going to fill out the questions. They're going to sign off on the checklists.

You're going to see things like examples you see here-- confirm that bedding material is installed. You see photos installed in there showing them bedding material going down for a pipe. Below that, it talks about location. They've uploaded a photo that's highlighted showing the utility location. They're doing the checklist form. Below that, confirm materials, meet required specs. And there's a picture of the pipe and some gasket material.

You can see the sub filled out his name. The location is there for it. And this kind of gives you a little bit of documentation going a couple of different ways. Say that pipe leaked. You can go back and say, well, look, wait. We checked. Everything met plans and specs. And we put the bedding in properly. We have these photos. We have these documentations.

Before you go digging it up, you can say, well, we did our checks. Or you go back to the checklist and say, hey, sub, you said this all met spec. Looking back at these gaskets in this picture here, those weren't what you submitted us. Maybe that's a problem. Before we go digging down, we might have an idea of what is wrong with that pipe and why it's leaking. This gives you that extra layer of documentation. And it goes both ways, for the sub and the GC. That gives them that documentation as well.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Exactly. And once again, the handle of doing it after each piece gets installed, you start to get a handle of it. It's never going to work perfectly. But like John said, it works both ways.

JON WARD: Yeah. And that's the big sell. I think you set the expectation early with the subs.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Yeah.

JON WARD: Again, like, you get in there early when they first get on site and you explain to them, this is our plan. We have a plan. This is what you're going to do with these checklists and these areas. And you might get a little knee-jerk reaction at first. But after that and t hey start doing it, it's just business as usual. It's just one more thing, one more document that you do at the end of a section.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Right.

JON WARD: It shouldn't take more than five minutes. And talking about checklist completion, so once that checklist is complete, you obviously can see here there's a sign-off for the subcontractor. Again, he signs off, and then that kind of gets an alert to us, somebody on the Clayco team to go out and take a look at that area. So then we can put it in our punch list issues. As you can see like in the bottom picture there, the issues button is right there.

So even after the sub signs it, you can still hit the issues button, put in as many issues as you need to for that area on that trade. And then you sign off on it saying it's complete except for those issues. Or if it's something really egregious, you just don't sign the checklist. You say, oh, man, you missed a whole piece of duct work on the east side of that building. And no, I'm not going to sign off on that. That's not done yet. So you just don't sign the checklist and send it right back to him.

So a quick overview of what this process looks like throughout the project-- what Clayco is doing, I'm sure most PCs are pretty similar to this. We have our project kickoff at the beginning of the job. We get together and talk about all the plans that we need to put together, and the logistics, and things like that.

When we're in there working, starting the project, we're onboarding subcontractors. We usually have what we call pre-con meetings, subcontractor scope meeting, whatever it is for anybody else. I'm sure when the sub's coming on-site, you want to have a meeting with them to discuss what their scope looks like and what work they're going to be performing. And they're just performing the work after that.

So at project kickoff is when you want to sit down with your team internally and look at, these are the checklists we have. These are the ones we want. We're going to modify a couple of them. These are the areas that meet the schedule. We're going to lay these areas out in BIM 360 and we're going to make this match to what we want.

And then we will move into getting with the subcontractors when they come on-site. I discussed getting with them early and often and helping them understand what the expectations are for the punch as your build process.

We do offer training for the subcontractors. So whenever we get some on-site, they're not really familiar. I've heard some dirt work contractors tell me that they aren't-- they don't have anybody smart enough to run a smartphone or an app. And I see a 23-year-old on an app right across from me. So they're out there. And we offer-- you know, it's a free app, obviously. And we offer training.

VDC goes out and trains on how to use all of this, how to put in issues, close issues, complete checklists. We provide a free training to all the subs and the site teams. Once I get that buy-in, it's really just performing the work. It's managing that process once you get there-- making sure that you have a plan, you're working the plan, and it just becomes easy, and like I said, just another day at work after that.

So that comes to managing that plan-- planning and management. A couple of ways that we've gone about this. This is an Excel spreadsheet that's not part of BIM 360. If somebody from Autodesk out there has a way to make this part of BIM 360, that would be absolutely amazing. But what we're doing is we've taken the checklist that we're going to use for that project here on the left side. They whittle it down from 200 to, say, 75 that they're going to use.

And the column right next to that is the subcontractor that's responsible for those checklists. Across the top, you can see a lot of areas. So those are the areas that we've laid out in BIM 360 that's going to match our schedule so that we can make sure that these checklists are getting completed in the right areas. So then a little bit of legwork goes into it.

So you see the brown boxes would be where a checklist does not apply and the red boxes would be where a checklist needs to get performed. You might see-- so the above ceiling inspection checklist is the first one on there.

You'll notice that most of them are brown except for the vestibule and the closet are the two that have checklists marked on them because those are the only two that had hard-topped ceilings in them. So those are the only ones that require an above ceiling inspection, just as an example. So then you can use this roadmap to plan out the expectations of what you need to have from a quality standpoint and what you expect the subs to do whenever they're filling out their checklist as they complete an area.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: And John, haven't you seen the projects that have followed this kind of plan, they feel better going in? Like, they've got maybe the next six weeks, or eight weeks, or two months. They got an idea geographically of how they're going to fill out the work. It just gives them a better framework, wouldn't you say?

JON WARD: Yeah, absolutely. I think it makes the subs feel better, too, because they know what's expected of them instead of just randomly being told the checklist here, or checklist here, or wherever. It kind of feels like this is establishing something early, and showing it to everybody, and this is what we're doing. It makes everybody feel better that there's a plan to work towards.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Right.

JON WARD: And then this is another way to manage that. This is your typical three-week look-ahead that you would get from a superintendent that's laying out the projects. You can still use that map that we just showed you, the kind of matrix. But use it alongside with this.

And then you, if you have off-site QC manager-- and we have this happening on a job site right now-- you can go through and look and see, all right, plumbing in this area is done on Tuesday, on 8/31 Tuesday. I want to see a plumbing checklist on that day. So you can plan out your next two weeks. You can say, all right, the next two weeks, with his schedule, I want to see all these different checklists in these areas.

And you go ahead and open those checklists in BIM 360 and you assign them to the subcontractors so that he can see them. And then in your meetings, your foreman's meetings, or QC meetings, whatever you're having, you can just manage those open checklists for the next two weeks. You say, all right, you have your checklist assigned to you with the dates they need to be done. The subcontractor can see them. And then he can know that, all right, I got these checklists due for these areas as I get closer to completing them. And it gives you an easier way to manage that process.

NICK AUDRAIN: So obviously, in order for this to actually work and for it projects to hit the ground running with it once they start up, we need to educate. So we need to educate our teams, educate the enterprise, and provide specified training. So we offer different types of training. We do have material we can provide, whether that's PowerPoints, handouts, videos.

But ideally, this is done on site and in person. That's where we've definitely found the most traction. By being on site, being in person, offering up your time for one, two days, maybe even a week to spend with the project team and spend with the subcontractors, it's not just you do the training and you all sign off your different countries or different states. So it's more difficult to communicate with each other.

By staying on-site after that one-hour training, 1.5-hour training, one of us can spend an hour with a project engineer, an hour with a superintendent. You can go out in the field, do it on the iPad, do it on the iPhone, or the Android device, or whatever they're using. Offer up that one-on-one time so they can really get to know it and make it much easier for them.

So we do that for both the Clayco project team. Ideally, that's done first and after all of this prep work is done that Jon's been talking about. And then either later that day or maybe the next day, we'll do a similar training for the subcontractors, but more focused on their end of things.

By doing the subcontractors after the Clayco project team, that way the Clayco project team can actually be a part of the subcontractor training, you know? Me, if I go out, I do a training for subs. And if they have project-specific questions, I'm not going to be able to answer those. We're helping covering projects across the enterprise. So by having the Clayco project team in there educated on this process, they can participate and speak to those subs on project specifics.

We also offer training for architects and designers that might be a part of this process. And really, it can't always happen. But ideally, these trainings are done in conjunction between the VDC group and quality. This isn't just a software we're training on or picks and clicks that we're training on. It's a philosophy and a culture of quality that we're trying to educate these teams on.

So by doing this together, you can focus on both sides of it, both the process, the picks and clicks within the App, within the software, but also, why do we do this? And really speaking to that quality side of things.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Yeah. Just one more thing to add on that, you're always going to have projects where they're like, we're good. We don't need training. We know BIM 360. We know how to use the app. Well, no, like Nick said, this is more about our standard operating procedure, punch as you build. This is more than just talking about BIM 360.

And invariably, after going through the training, they'll always get something out of it. And really, it shows between those who resist the training and don't want to do it and those who say, you know what? Yeah, let's get trained. Let's get on board. It goes a lot better. So training is always beneficial.

JON WARD: I can tell you that I've been to jobs and done the training. Their executive management asked us to go out and train a project. And we did it, and they didn't listen, and didn't do it. And I was called to come back out there and help them close punch list issues at the end of the job because they weren't going to make it to substantial completion on time. And I'm not going to lie. I rubbed that in their faces pretty hard.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Yep, there you go.

NICK AUDRAIN: Yeah, I'll say I remember, Jon, I think it was about a year and a half ago, maybe close to two years ago, I think you had visited the job, or maybe it was Jacob. But someone from our quality team had visited a job in California. They were ripe for punch as you build. It was the very beginning of the project. So we were asked to go out there, provide the training on this process.

And it was the first time, I think, we were doing this training formally. And so we reached out to the team, sent them all the prep work, what we need from them, what we're going to provide them, how it's going to work. And I don't remember exactly what they said, but I think the response was basically just, no, thanks. And so this can definitely be met with a little bit of a battle sometimes.

And I remember on that training, once we did get out there, challenges always come up beyond that. You first get there, and they don't want you there. And then you get there, and the power went out that morning. And so you've got no power to put up a presentation. And then it turns out none of the subcontractors have accepted the invite to BIM 360, so none of them are even in it yet. And a couple guys don't speak English. And all these things can come up.

But since then, I really think our training has improved. Each time we do the training, we come back with lessons learned and we're able to improve. So with those specific examples, you might we learn how do we approach these teams better with this process right from the jump? How do we adjust to things like the power went out. Do we have offline options?

If the subs aren't in BIM 360, let's make sure. Let's guarantee that they're all ready to go before you get there. Everyone's all prepared to participate in the training. So this is a constantly improving process.

So a little bit about the training, some specifics, like I mentioned, we provide training for the Clayco project team. We go over things like we've got all these checklists that they can use. Prior to this, they would have picked the ones that make sense for their project. But we'll go over what are the required checklists on every single job? We'll show them where can they go and find these checklists? How do they go through and review them? Where do they live in BIM 360?

And then, of course, how to create, assign, complete, and digitally sign a checklist, really going through that process in depth. On top of checklists, we'll go over the issue workflow. Issues are a really important part of this process. So prior to this, we would have gone through these prep steps of adding drawings for issue pinning, coming up with the locations list, getting a subcontractor list to onboard them into BIM 360. So we'll review those just to remind them that those are complete.

And then going through the standard workflow, how do you create an issue? What issue types do you use from our standardized issue types list? How do you assign it to someone? How does that person or that subcontractor that you assign it to, how do they address that issue with proper documentation? And then ultimately, how do you close that issue when it's been resolved in the field?

And then lastly, we'll go over issue reporting. So it's important to create these issues and get them closed, but there's alternative ways to report on these issues. And we show them how to generate those reports, schedule them, and distribute those reports to project stakeholders.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Yeah. And just an additional tip here, like Nick said, coming out to a job site, he's going to probably bill his time and his expenses for that project. So they're taking time out for the Clayco team to sit in the trailer, to listen to him. And again, they may say, well, we already know. So it's important to always have your agenda set out beforehand in the meeting invite.

This is the exact breakdown. This is the detail we're going to cover. So then they understand, wow, this is not just opening the app and walking it through. This is Clayco-specific requirements and quite a detailed, in-depth-- I mean, how long do you take for training the Clayco teams normally, Nick?

NICK AUDRAIN: I mean, we plan for an hour, and then you're there the rest of the day. So you offer them time to--

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Yeah, one-on-one.

JON WARD: Yeah, the individual training might be an hour. But I've seen them-- that's the whole day, you do one-on-one training with the other subs that might need some extra help.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Yeah.

JON WARD: Or you're out in the field, and talking to them, making sure they all understand what they have to do to close an issue or a checklist.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: So related to that, we got the subcontractors.

NICK AUDRAIN: Yeah. So of course, we got the subcontractor trainings as well. This one's a little bit more focused on their end of things, not quite as much on the entire process. And so in this training, we'll focus on where can they find-- similar to the Clayco side of things, where can they find the available QC checklist templates? Where do those live?

But like Jon touched on earlier, all of these checklists are organized by spec section division number. So if there's a hundred checklists being used on one project, we don't want the concrete sub to have to scroll through all 100 of those to find just the one that they want. So they can just type in 03, and all of the concrete checklist come up. The electrical sub puts in 26, and all of theirs come up. So we try to make this as easy as possible for them to find what they need.

And of course, we'll go through how they can create checklists, how they ultimately complete those checklists, and then digitally sign those checklists. On the issue side of things, we'll demonstrate the standard workflow for how Clayco creates issues, how the sub addresses them, and then how Clayco ultimately closes them.

But the focus here is really how subs are expected to respond to issues. We can notify them of an issue and they can go resolve it in the field. But it's really important that in responding to the issue in BIM 360, they're providing that proper documentation-- so things like photos of the fix. They're providing any attachments, whether it's an Excel file, a drawing. They can attach those to the issue.

They can provide an official response, a quick couple sentences what they did to fix the issue. And then they can change the status of the issue to let Clayco know that they've resolved it. And then Clayco can go and review and close it out if they're satisfied.

And then lastly, it's important to show our subcontractors the visibility into their issues. I might get a notification, but how do I view all the issues that are in my court at this point? Where are all my closed issues? Where all those that I've addressed, but Clayco needs to take a look at? So it's important to provide them with that visibility.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Yeah. So just a couple things on this is that it's really important to set the expectations upfront with them. Just like Jon and Nick said, they got awarded the project with Clayco. This is how Clayco works. It is in their contract to use the punch as you go workflow. And it sets the expectation from day one with them that we will create issues. We will watch the work. We will assign issues to you. You're expected to respond in this way. It holds them accountable.

It also protects them because now, we have a nice paper trail with photo documentation of what exactly they installed and when they installed it. So the subs that have followed this, there may be some resistance early on. But they do appreciate the fact that there is a way to track what was done as well.

And then one thing that we're really excited about, like Jon said in the beginning, we never really had standards on issue types. And it's really, really important. If you take one thing out of this class, it's really important at your firm that you standardize your checklist types and your issue types.

So you can see we've got this poster that's mandatory on all Clayco job sites. It's in the trailer. And in the bold text there on the left where it says, Architect-Engineer, Commissioning, Quality, and so forth, those are our Clayco standard issue types. And for each issue type, it's got its QR code. And when you scan the QR code, it tells you, OK, who uses that issue type? When do you use that issue type?

So for example, the first one, Architect-Engineer, when they're doing their site visit or punch list, they would use that issue type. Now when they click on the QR code, they'll get a one-pager handout that'll show them, hey, these are the subtypes under Architect-Engineering. Maybe it's a site visit. That'll be issued as a subtype. Maybe it's a punch list. That'll be punch list as a subtype.

And hey, like Nick said, how do you create that issue? Who do you assign it to, right? How do issues get responded to? And you see at the very bottom left of the poster, there is subcontractor response. So now in the trailer, when the subs come in the trailer, they can scan that with their phone as well. And they can get reminded of, how do I respond?

So this poster is kind of showing many things. First of all, you need standards. That takes time to get the right people, right? VDC has worked in conjunction with quality over numerous years to refine these standard issue types. Secondly, how do you document and display that information in a concise fashion? A poster is great. But we also need a mechanism to have the flexibility to update this information in an easy manner.

So using the QR code gets them quickly taking out their phone in the trailer, scanning the document, right? And we have them set to SharePoint links so we can easily update them on the back end. I can't tell you how many times there may need to be a change to those one-pager documents, a correction here and there. And having this whole workflow set up like this allows you to say, if people get familiar with the poster, what it looks like, how they respond to it. But it lets us have the flexibility to make changes where we need to.

One of the things that we've really started promoting-- and it's been around a while. It was in BIM 360 Field. But we're really using BIM 360, and we're excited to use it in ACC Build is an enhanced tracking method especially for high-rises, right? How do you track all of the issues or checklists related to that room during construction to during the pressure point of punch lists towards the end of the project when the teams are tracking to substantial completion date an easy mechanism to see what is still open in each room?

So let's say you've got a QR code that we put up on the door frame. You can see that graphic there on the bottom right. The project teams are trained by VDC, by quality. They know to take out their app. They scan the QR code. It takes them to that room. And it says, OK, there are some issues that are still open related to this room. So for example there on the right, semi suite. Pipe risers penetration into the fire wall, there you go.

When that subcontractor scans that QR code, they'll only see issues that are open for them, right? The owner may have visibility for all the issues. The Clayco team will have visibility to all the issues.

The architect will appreciate when they come to the jobsite, OK, when they're back punching, what issues do I still need to look at? Has Clayco responded? Has the sub responded to it? They can scan the rooms, the QR codes in the rooms and see what is still remaining. So it really helps with the organization, visibility. Again, you're bringing structure to the closeout process.

And going back to the project that John referenced with a high-rise and only 60 punch list items at the end of the project, that job needed this kind of process to stay organized. We even got kudos from the owner that appreciated that we had set up this process. So just a simple thing like this can help everyone from the Clayco team, from the subcontractors, from the owner's side who are watching understand, OK, this team looks organized and has a mechanism in place to finish out the job in a proper fashion.

JON WARD: I just want to say, Mark, that also, I mean I love that we've used assets outside of the box. Traditionally, you think of it as equipment.

MARK DA GAMA ROSE: Right.

JON WARD: But we're using it as rooms and areas. But we still use it as equipment, also. We have commissioning agents that work in our mission critical atmosphere, and they are. They're building 400-piece equipment lists and the asset tracking in BIM 360, and putting all the pre-energization, energization start-up checklists in there, and tracking all the issues for each piece of equipment. So I mean, it's great for a lot of different projects and different ways to use it-- rooms, equipment, whatever it might be.